Sunday, November 11, 2012

David Frum Why Romney Lost & The GOPs Unwinnible Strategy And Jim Crow Alive and Well In Florida & Arizona etc.

"Mitt Romney's message is I am going to take away Medicare from everybody under 55, I'm going to cut Medicaid for everybody but about a third, and I'm going to do that to finance a giant tax cut for me and my friends, and the reason I'm doing that is because half the country contribute nothing to the national endeavor."

Voter suppression in this last US election according to the complaints being made and the videos of the outrageously long lines at polling stations in some states is evidence of the need for reforming the election process and election campaigns.

And here's an update on the notorious racist Sheriff Arpaio and the crooks who run Arizona who believe only the votes of white men should be counted.

If you're not in Arizona, you could easily miss the story of what's happening there this week: More than 630,00 votes left to count after Tuesday's election, more than 172,000 of them provisional ballots, and many of those believed to have been cast by newly registered Latino voters who experienced some kind of hitch at the polls. Voters who used a provisional ballot face a deadline of Wednesday to return to their county elections offices and present ID that shows they voted rightfully.

Enough votes remain uncounted to swing several races in Arizona, including three for Congress and some where candidates have conceded or declared victory. At the far end of the spectrum, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's apparent re-election falls within the range of votes still not counted. Much closer is the race for Congresswoman Gabby Giffords old seat, now divided by a few hundred votes.

Jim Crow voter suppression is alive and well in Florida and Arizona etc. As we have seen since the 2000 election til this recent election there is a need for election reform . Supposedly we are told American citizens have the right to vote but it appears that Republicans treat this right in a rather disdainful or cavalier fashion and so do all they can to try to rig the vote in their favor and they really see nothing wrong with that . But it doesn't matter which party is involved with election rigging and voter suppression it is surely an important issue but those involved in these 'dirty tricks" and what have you to steal the vote from average Americans see it all as business and politics as usual that screwing with the system is the greater right as it were than the right to vote and have one's vote counted .

and in her ongoing concern over voter suppressions and the right to vote Rachel Maddow adds this :

As mentioned in an earlier post David Frum whether or not one agrees with his politics and ideology he is one of the few conservatives in the Republican party who appears to be a fairly rational person who is thoughtful and knowledgeable and doesn't play to the worst parts of the GOP base. Frum argues that the Republicans lost the election because they played too much to the worst parts of their including those who believe in or at least promote various conspiracy theories about Obama.
Frum on Morning Joe: a remarkable 15 minutes of television by David Atkins at Hullabaloo/digby Nov. 10

Former Bush speechwriter David Frum made a remarkable appearance on Morning Joe, saying things even many progressives often won't come out and say. The video is below.

Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks and newly elected (or re-elected) Democrat Senator Alan Grayson in the video below posted at Hullabaloo discuss the basic reluctance for Democrats to fight for their principles either because they are owned by wealthy donors or are just cowards.
As the article points out this was a stunning victory by Alan Grayson.
Blue America scorecard by digby From Howie at hullabaloo:, nov. 10, 2012

The first time he ran for Congress, Alan Grayson lost the primary. Two years later Blue America encouraged him to run again and he did. Derided by the political Establishment in Florida and in DC, he beat their favorite in the primary and went on to beat the incumbent Republican congressman in the November general. He then went on to inspire millions of Americans desperate for political leaders who could and would stand up to the conservative consensus that dominates Beltway politics. And when Grayson lost in 2010, he started working on the 2012 race. Blue America was with him every step of the way.
And on Tuesday we celebrated when he won the biggest congressional comeback in American history-- a 62.5% victory that saw him win the vote in every municipality in Florida's 9th district. He won among men and he won among women; he won the youth vote and he won the senior vote and he won the votes of people in between. He won among white people, among black people, among Hispanics and among Asians. He won the urban vote, the suburban vote and the rural vote and he won over 60% of the vote in Orange County, in Osceola County and even in red-leaning Polk County! 3,205 individual contributions from Blue America donors added up to $57,190 for Alan this year.

The organization FAIR in a recent article attacked The new York Times for claiming that there was no real difference in the way news is treated at either MSNBC or Fox News Channel that both are partisan and have an axe to grind.But as the title of the article at FAIR suggests there is in fact a difference but having been partisan itself the New York Times doesn't see the difference.
( It's Awkward for NBC When MSNBC Tells the Truth by Jim Naureckas at FAIR.org, Nov. 6,2012

The New York Times has a news piece today (11/6/12) reporting that MSNBC is just like Fox News, and isn't that awful.
Now, MSNBC, for all its flaws, is not really anything like Fox News. And most of Times reporter Jeremy Peters' evidence for their similarity comes from a Pew study of "positive" and "negative" news coverage–the kind of study that will only be meaningful after someone comes up with an objective scale for measuring how positive or negative reality is.
MSNBC's Rachel Maddow (JD Lasica)
But I was struck by this anecdotal example of the Fox-like "partisan bitterness" supposedly on display on MSNBC:

In her ad, Rachel Maddow breathlessly decodes the logic behind the push to overhaul state voting laws. "The idea is to shrink the electorate," she says, "so a smaller number of people get to decide what happens to all of us."
Such stridency has put NBC News journalists who cover Republicans in awkward and compromised positions, several people who work for the network said

.
Now, if you've been following the voter ID story at all closely, you know there's no evidence of any organized voter impersonation on any kind of scale at all–that these laws will make it harder for millions of people to vote in an ostensible effort to stop a handful of people from cheating. So the obvious conclusion is–that the idea is to shrink the electorate. (This intention can also be seen, by the way, in the coordinated GOP efforts to curtail early voting.)
You can see how it might make it awkward for reporters if their pundit colleagues are analyzing reality too accurately. It's obviously much easier for journalists covering Republicans if everyone at their network pretends the party is telling the truth about its concerns about voter fraud.
You know who else would have made it awkward for NBC to cover Republicans if he had worked as a pundit for MSNBC? Conservative movement pioneer Paul Weyrich:

I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of the people. They never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down

Paul Weyrich and Republicans in fact are anti-democracy

There is in fact a difference between an uninformed reality adverse opion as opposed to a learned and knowledgeable opinion derived from looking at the facts and seeing them in their context in the real world where often things are not as clear cut as any ideologue of whatever stripe might maintain.
The New York Times is once again promoting the notion of objective journalism which on the face of it is comendable but they go to far. Objective journalism means taking on a story with no partisan axe to grind.
In this sense one speaks of the idea that there are at least two sides if not more of a story. This may be the premise one begins with but the actual facts and reality need to be taken into account. For a supposedly liberal media outlet such as the New York Times they appear to believe that all so called truths and even facts are relative.

So for instance on the issue for example of the necessity of going to war with Iraq and its leader Saddam the Bush administration's arguments and their so called irrefutable facts about invading and occupying Iraq turned out to be non-existent in the real world. Saddam was not involved with 9/11 terrorists attacks on the USA. Saddam in fact was no longer a threat to the USA after some ten years of sanctions and the Gulf War though the Bush administration argued otherwise. . Saddam had also in fact destroyed his so called WMDs in the early 1990s .
The Bush administration with the help of the Mainstream Media claimed contrary to the facts that Saddam was not cooperating with the UN inspectors looking for evidence of WMDs and for evidence that Saddam was secretly persuing the building of a nuclear weapons stockpile. The UN inspectors left Iraq because the USA was geared towards an invasion of Iraq irrespective of the facts.
Those at the highest levels of the Bush administration and the Pentagon and intelligence agencies knew these above mentioned facts about Saddam and that he was no longer a threat but this reality was not conducive or supportive of a rationale for going to war with Saddam. So these various high level authorities in Washington wanted for whatever reason to take out Saddam and to do so by means of invading and occupying a sovereign nation and so they manufactured evidence to suggest Saddam was still involved with the production of Weapons of Mass Destruction such as chemical and biological weapons and was trying to build nuclear weapons as well and was behind the 9/11 attacks .
The New York Times and most of the Mainstream Media fell for these lies and are still embarrassed about admitting they had been bamboozled.

Even president Obama is uncomfortable speaking bluntly about the lie the Bush administration had promulgated in their propaganda war to convince the Media and the American people and the United Nations that Saddam was an imminent threat to its neighbors including Israel and was an imminent threat to the USA. None of this was true.

So given all of the evidence we now have The New York Times appears to argue that it is all a matter of perception and nothing to do with a "perceived reality" as created by the Bush administration and that of what the reality actually was based upon proven facts.
So the New York Times believes that facts are unimportant its rather a matter of what a president and others in positions of authority say that really matters.

So getting back to Mitt Romney there were various facts and evidence revealed about him and his ideological point of view which suggested that he was not being truthful in all that he said. Just because Romney or even Obama say something and claim it as the truth or reality does not make it so. The secret video of Romney at a Republican wealthy donators event said he was ignoring 47% of the electorate because for various reasons are never going to be in favor of his ideological approach to governance and his belief that this 47% were in favor of his opponent President Obama because they wanted "free stuff" and Obama he claimed would give them more "free stuff "and would excessivly tax the wealthy to pay for all of the "free stuff". Romney was quite blunt in the way that he spoke and sounded sincere so according to The New York Times and others of the Mainstream Media it was beyond the pale to suggest that Romney had written off 47% of the electorate before the campaign really began and was revealing his negative and distainful attitude towards that 47% and thereby adding credence to labelling him as elitist and appearing to be out of touch with the struggles of the Middle Class and working class people in America .

So according to Mitt Romney given this statement he believes that almost half of all American citizens are lazy "moochers' and "takers" and welfare bums as opposed to real Americans like him who are "producers "and "makers". To have this disclosed during an election campaign is rather damaging to the candidate and his or her party affiliation when they are trying to appear as populist and on the side of the average citizen.

But Romney also told lies about his connections with Bain and about how he made himself wealthy . He did not help to prop up a number of businesses in America as he would like to have people assume but rather made money by dissolving businesses and laying off thousands of employees and outsourcing work to other nations while investing and banking a large amout of his money in countries which are used as tax shelters for American businesses.

But adding to his branding as an elitist Romney admitted he enjoyed firing people which is not helpful at all for appealing to average Americans when so many are struggling just to get by who have lost their jobs or fear losing their jobs and if they find work it may be work they either don't like as much as the job they had previously or doesn't pay as well as the job they had So according to the Objective theory of journalism just by reporting these facts shows a partisan point of view . These so called gaffes fed of course into the Democrats narrative and branding of Mitt Romney and the Republican party as being out of touch with the reality which average citizens face each and every day.
So Romney's obvious lies and lame defense and gaffes are not seen as fair game to the New York Post this is understandable because they believe that journalist have no right to judge a candidate even based upon the known facts. But these glimpses into Romney's world of the super-wealthy did not serve him or his party well . But Romney also did not come back with a good response to these gaffes and about his actual business experience or his life style. Part of what's troubling about all of this in regard to the New York Times is that at times the New York Times acted as a conduit for the Bush Regime .

So it is a bit galling that the New York Times would be so willing to judge other journalist and claiming any journalist who is critical of Romney based upon the facts is merely playing partisan politics. In that case it would have been a good thing if there had been more so called partisan politics on the part of journalists in regards to the Bush Regime's propaganda pushing America into going to war with Iraq .Instead as usual the mainstream media for which the New York Times is a prime example merely doubles down to find more ways to justify its past actions in which it was silent and tacitly agreed with Bush on most issues without any fact checking or stepping back and thinking about what the Bush regime was up to.

So we could suggest that it is somewhat disengenuous of The New York Times to criticize MSNBC of being partisan given the notorious role The New York Times and other Mainstream Media played in promulgating the Bush Regime's propaganda for unnecessarily going to war with iraq or the Bush Regimes use of torture on detainees and its disdain for American law and the US constitution and Bill Of Rights and International Law. The media in the the United States played a similar role as the media in non-democratic nations of supporting those in positions of authority no matter the consequences.
In the case of torture rather than a consensus that first that the Enhanced Interrogation Methods were and are to be deemed as torture the media argued over what constitutes torture questioning whart had been the international consensus about what constitutes torture going back to at least the Nuremberg trials and legal decisions.

Suddenly Americans were told its all relative that the definiton of torture was up for grabs. Its odd that those on the right who ridicule liberals for their appeal to relativism when it comes to other values and cultures and norms have been so adamant that torture in some cases is necessary and that it also depends upon what constitutes torture so the whole question of torture is up for grabs .

In the writings of the right secular and religious are adamant that values and ethics or morals are not relative . Their source of these eternal morals and values is the Bible . The Bible therefore must also be in favor of rigging elections and inventing conspiracy theories and is against real democracy . But what sort of governance be in favor of ? Jesus never mentioned that he favored democracy and if we refer back to the Old Testament then it would seem the Judeo-Christian God is in favor of monarchies as in King David and Solomon etc. Maybe this explains their somewhat ambivalent attitude towards democracy .

Unfortunately even President Obama has a rather twisted definition of torture in which like Bush he doesn't take such accusations of the US using torture as being serious. So now torture is defined in a way which is in agreement with Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, John Yoo, Bybee and Condi Rice.
The denial of legal process and justice for individuals and the acceptance of some forms of torture as being the new norm in the USA and the draconian police state style of crushing populist protests in the streets of New York, Chicago, Portland etc. and the anti-democracy rules and tactics used by various states and municipalities to discourage or prevent all citizens who are eligible to vote to actually voting all of this leads one to conclude that something is deeply wrong with America and that it looks and sounds like some nations like Bahrain ruled by an authoritarian regime.